With rising energy costs, it has become very important to individual recycling centers to have available a relatively inexpensive and efficient means to compress builky items for salvage, such as automobile bodies, refrigerators, stoves and the like. The efficient compacting of salvage material offers significant savings in shipping and handling.
Earlier attempts of inexpensive units to meet the needs of smaller salvage operations have rarely been consistently successful in compressing auto bodies to uniform compaction, and have employed a direct hydraulic actuation that requires a long cylinder stroke; and due to design limitations, are least efficient at the end of the cylinder stroke, where the greatest compacting effort is required. As a result, compaction is often uneven around vehicle cowles, and the like, where greater resistance to compaction is inherent. This uneven compaction results in more handling and fewer cars per payload, reducing savings and efficiency. Prior models have also commonly employed overhead structures which serve to restrict visibility, limit the height of material to be compacted, and restrict loading from above, such as from an overhead crane or hoist. Further, the piston-cylinder assemblies commonly extend beyond the protection of their compactor structure, making them susceptible to damage. The prior art is exemplified in the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 4,188,876, 3,844,209, 3,796,151, 3,564,994, 3,623,425, 3,356,016, 3,730,078, 3,554,121, 3,554,119, 3,545,369, 3,356,018, 3,651,754, 3,413,914, 3,101,045, 2,932,247, 2,932,244, 3,404,622, 3,641,927, 3,237,554, Canadian Pat. No. 814,178, Canadian Pat. No. 684,261, Canadian Pat. No. 612,940, Canadian Pat. No. 815,290